medical doctor in 1994. The Amanitare/Rainbo
project, started in 1999, bases its mandate on the
Vienna Conference, the Cairo International Con-
ference on Population and Development (1994),
and the Beijing World Conference on Women
(1995). One of its key research projects involves the
progressive reduction of female genital mutilation
(FGM) in Africa, including African Muslim soci-
eties. The organization has published a guide to
laws on FGM (2000). Another example is the
Gender Desk (founded 1993) of the Muslim Youth
Movement (MYM 1970) in South Africa. Shamima
Shaykh, a Muslim woman activist, worked with
MYM to involve Muslim youth in the politics of
the anti-apartheid movement. With the coming of
political freedom, she founded the Gender Desk in
order to promote the interests of Muslim women in
the gender policy of the new political order. More
specifically, she sought equal access for women to
Muslim religious institutions and positions.
Other women’s organizations have an explicit
Muslim identity and focus. The 1993 Vienna Con-
ference spurred the Ford Foundation to support
organizations that had consolidated their activities
earlier as a result of the 1985 Nairobi International
Women’s conference. The major Muslim women’s
organization from that era founded by Muslim
women in 1984–5 was Women Living Under Mus-
lim Laws (WLUML), with its headquarters in
France. It mobilized initially around the imprison-
ment of Algerian feminists and extended its con-
cerns to all women affected by Muslim laws
globally. Its object is to network and encourage
women “to reflect, analyze and reformulate the
identity imposed on them through the application
of Muslim laws and by doing so, to assume greater
control over their lives.” In the 1990s, Ford Foun-
dation grants greatly boosted the organization’s
networking and global communications capabili-
ties. With headquarters now located in London, the
WLUML works throughout the Muslim world pri-
marily through local sister NGOs that have a rights
centered approach. One of its major coordinating
organizations for Africa and the Middle East is
BAOBAB for Women’s Human Rights, in Nigeria
(founded 1996). BAOBAB’s mandate includes im-
proving development of rights under religious and
customary laws. Like WILDAF, BAOBAB involves
itself in court litigation among other activities. It
has supported Muslim women brought to trial
under recent Islamic criminal laws in northern
Nigeria.
Umbrella organizations with a Muslim focus
such as WLUML and BAOBAB have long operated
alongside non-rights oriented older Muslim women’s280 human rights
organizations in Sub-Saharan African countries.
This is fast changing, however. The Ghanaian
Federation of Muslim Women’s Association, funded
by the Women’s Global Fund, promotes human
rights over against traditional practices such as
female circumcision. The Muslim Sisters Network
in Kenya has joined the national constitutional
debate to give voice to both traditional and liberal
perspectives on Islamic law. The corresponding role
of the Ugandan Muslim Women Vision (UMWV) in
the debate on the draft domestic relations bill,
which would prohibit polygamy and has been con-
tested publicly by the mufti of the Uganda Muslim
Supreme Council (March 2004), is not widely
known. Also with headquarters in Nigeria is the
Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations
of Nigeria (FOMWAN), which participated in
the 1985 International Women’s Conference in
Nairobi. It was created in 1985 as a result of dis-
satisfaction with the liberal academic feminist
philosophy of the Nigerian National Council of
Women’s Societies. FOMWAN is faith oriented and
participates in forming opinions on social and
political issues for women from the less educated
strata of society. It has organized, for example,
forums on HIV/AIDS and expanding women’s edu-
cation. Some of its branches have become members
of Nigeria’s democracy and governance project
funded by grants from Johns Hopkins University.
The Nigerian Federation has sister federations in
Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In 2003,
at a meeting in Accra sponsored by the Ghana
Center for Democratic Development, the Africa
Democracy Forum expressed interest in encourag-
ing a new activity for Muslim women’s organiza-
tions. They hope to bring Christian and Muslim
activists and communities together, along the lines
of the work of Women in Black in former Yugos-
lavia and the joint peace efforts of Muslim and
Christian women in an organization called The
Women’s Movement that Cares for Maluku (GPP,
founded in 2003) in Maluku Province in Indonesia.
The latest continent-wide legal development for
women’s human rights has been the signing in
Maputo of the Protocol to the African Charter of
Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of
Women in Africa, known in short as the Charter for
Rights of Women in Africa (July 2003). The proto-
col addresses and proscribes controversial African
religious and customary practices involving, inter
alia, inheritance, gives women the right to protec-
tion against HIV/AIDS, and guarantees women the
right to participate in the determination of cultural
policies and equal representation at all levels of
decision-making (which presumably includes the